Readings for Access in Digital Libraries Part II (10/26)

The Chapter regarding definitions and origins of the Open Archive Initiative I believe to be important for anyone considering librarianship as a career. Digitizing documents is both time consuming and expensive, especially for the equipment, so it's fundamentally a good thing that libraries can share documents through tools like the OAI. Not only does it disseminate information to a larger audience, but non-programming librarians can have a better concept of technical concepts related to digital collections. Also, the importance of useful metadata should not be over-exaggerated, which is the overarching goal of the OAI; to provide descriptive metadata.

The Todd Miller article on federated searching seems to be unavailable through the Library Journal's archives, as the link no longer works, and I tried (unsuccessfully) to locate it on my own.


The article by Clifford Lynch regarding Z39.50 standards is very useful to the technical side of librarianship. The standard, developed by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), is used to specify data structures and rules applied to database searching that allows a client to retrieve records from a server machine. First developed in the 1980's, the most current version of Z39.50 was adopted in 1995, and sometimes referred to as version 3. Basically, the standard is meant for compatibility reading between the client and server alone, and doesn't accommodate third parties. One key aspect to remember, is that the standard doesn't deal with any database management or user interface issues, but simply the protocol interaction between the two machines.

The article by Norbert Lossau was a refreshing break from all the computer-tech jargon of the previous articles. Examining an issue of grand proportions for academic libraries, Lossau notes the importance of relevant search strategies for digital documents. He stresses the importance of libraries taking control of developing meaningful search engines, so that they don't get left behind in the digital shadow of giants like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. Something that struck me in the reading was his mention of a survey conducted in November 2002, noting that students still make extensive use of online library database searching, but would much rather do it through interfaces like Google's. I found this especially interesting, because most people need at least minimal training to effectively navigate through digital library catalogs. Google's algorithm eliminates the need for Boolean search strategies like using AND and OR, and doesn't need to specify fields like "author," although there are useful applications of such strategies.